Silicon photonic transmitter and receiver for hybrid multiplexing systems

High-capacity on-chip optical transmitters and receivers are crucial for data transmissions. Currently, advanced multiplexing technologies, including wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), mode-division multiplexing (MDM), and polarization-division-multiplexing (PDM) have been developed to greatly enhance the link capacity. In this paper, monolithically integrated silicon photonic transmitter and receiver with an ultra-high-capacity density of 37.0 Tbps/cm 2 were proposed and demonstrated by introducing hybrid multiplexers and arrayed modulators/photodetectors. For the demonstrated transmitter/receiver chips, there are five wavelength channels and four mode channels with dual polarizations involved, while all these channels have low excess losses of 1 to 2 dB and low crosstalk less than −15 dB. Finally, all 20 channels are able to work with 50 Gbps on–off keying (OOK) signals per channel, achieving a total capacity of 1T-bps within an ultra-compact chip size of 0.032 cm 2 for transmitters and 0.022 cm 2 for receivers.